]]>Editor's note: This story (originally published on March 14th, 2018, was cited by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) on the Senate floor at Mike Pompeo’s confirmation hearing on April 25. Blumenthal called Pompeo “a poster boy for the impact of money in politics” and recommended that all his colleagues read the article. It was printed in its entirety in the Congressional Record.

(Alex WongGetty Images)

President Trump nixed Rex Tillerson as secretary of state Tuesday in favor of CIA Director Mike Pompeo, a former Kansas congressman whose political career was paved by Koch Industries.

Headquartered in Pompeo’s former Wichita district, the privately held company run by conservative megadonors Charles and David Koch has funneled more money to the Trump pick than any other federal politician.

The oil-and-gas conglomerate built a reputation for using a network of “dark money” to exert political influence and was Pompeo’s top donor over the course of his former congressional career.

That “in” may work to the advantage of the Koch brothers, who hold a significant interest in global affairs, especially with Trump’s recently imposed tariffs.

Top Donors to Mike Pompeo (Career Totals)

Donor

Total

Koch Industries

$400,500

Textron

$79,810

Mull Drilling

$70,350

Club for Growth

$64,817

Ritchie Exploration

$55,954

INTRUST Bank

$55,300

McCoy Petroleum

$52,550

AT&T

$51,250

Cox Enterprises

$47,300

Emprise Bank

$44,555

Since his first bid for Congress in 2010, Pompeo has received $400,500 from Koch Industries — $335,500 from individual employee contributions and $65,000 from its corporate PAC, Center for Responsive Politics data shows.

Each election cycle leading up to his confirmation as CIA director in 2017, Pompeo led all federal politicians in Koch-related donations. He’s also received more money from the oil interest than any candidate since 1989.

Trump’s announcement came in a surprise tweet Tuesday morning, adding Tillerson to a growing list of White House officials to unceremoniously leave the administration.

Mike Pompeo, Director of the CIA, will become our new Secretary of State. He will do a fantastic job! Thank you to Rex Tillerson for his service! Gina Haspel will become the new Director of the CIA, and the first woman so chosen. Congratulations to all!

Tillerson thanked members of the State Department in a news conference that afternoon, saying “the world needs selfless leaders such as these.”

“I will address a few administrative matters related to my departure and work towards a smooth and orderly transition for secretary of state-designate, Mike Pompeo,” Tillerson told reporters.

Pompeo’s relationship with the Kochs has held strong over the years. In 2014, when he faced a tough primary challenge, the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity group spent over $409,000 supporting Pompeo.

Other congressional leaders who trailed Pompeo in career donations from Koch Industries include House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) with $274,172 and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) with $148,350.

But Pompeo’s ties to the Koch brothers predate his political career.

He used investments from the Koch empire to help kick-start a Wichita-based company, Thayer Aerospace. After leaving the company, Pompeo acted as head of Sentry International, an oil drilling manufacturer with Koch ties.

Those investments seem to have paid off.

When Pompeo entered Congress, he brought with him a former Koch Industries lawyer as his chief of staff. Within his first week on the job, Pompeo proposed measures considered top legislative priorities for Koch Industries.

The proposals included cutting funding for an Environmental Protection Agency registry of greenhouse-gas polluters and a database of consumer complaints about unsafe products, The Washington Post reported.

Along with Koch support, Pompeo has been bankrolled by other oil-and-gas interests, including Textron, Mull Drilling and McCoy Petroleum. The industry has given him a total of $1.2 million, the most by any industry, CRP data shows.

Now Pompeo enters the role of the White House’s chief diplomat, a position that can affect the financial interests of multinational companies.

Top Politicians Supported by Koch Industries (Career Totals)

Politican

Last Office Sought

Total

Mike Pompeo (R-KS)

House

$400,500

Todd Tiahrt (R-KS)

House

$388,766

Paul Ryan (R-WI)

House

$274,172

Pat Roberts (R-KS)

Senate

$258,850

James M Inhofe (R-OK)

Senate

$187,150

Jerry Moran (R-KS)

Senate

$175,900

Roy Blunt (R-MO)

Senate

$168,600

Sam Brownback (R)

President

$168,050

Pete Sessions (R-TX)

House

$162,000

Mitch McConnell (R-KY)

Senate

$148,350

The Koch brothers already have a broad international presence. According to the company’s website, Koch companies alone “employ more than 120,000 people across about 60 countries.”

While Pompeo has yet to take a stance on Trump’s recently rolled out tariffs, Charles Koch harshly rejected them, saying in a press release last week that “History is filled with examples of administrations that implemented trade restrictions with devastating results.”

“One might assume that, as head of Koch Industries — a large company involved in many industries, including steel — I would applaud such import tariffs because they would be to our immediate and financial benefit,” he wrote. “Corporate leaders must reject this type of short-term thinking, and we have.”

Late last year, the Charles Koch Foundation embarked on a multimillion-dollar project to promote the realist school of foreign policy in programs at elite universities such as Harvard, Notre Dame and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Koch is an outspoken libertarian when it comes to foreign policy, and the realist school of foreign policy champions restraint on the world stage and taking a backseat on humanitarian intervention and nation-building.

Yesterday, NBC News reported that notes written by Trump’s then-campaign manager Paul Manafort during a June 2016 meeting with Russians at Trump Tower included cryptic references to political contributions and the Republican National Committee.

According to the report, the notes were turned over to both House and Senate intelligence committees, as well as to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, for their respective investigations into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in 2016.

Who or what the note might be a reference to is still a mystery. But as far as any Russian money might be concerned, it would be illegal for foreign nationals to contribute to candidates in U.S. elections.

Born in the Soviet Union, Simon Grigorievich Kukes emigrated to the U.S. in the 1970s. He spent time in academia in the Houston area and also worked for some oil and gas companies. By the 1990s, he was back in Russia where, in 2003, he became the head of Yukos Corp., a now-defunct oil company once owned by the Russian government. In ascending to the position, Kukes replaced the wealthiest man in Russia, a Putin foe named Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was charged with fraud and sentenced to 10 years in prison in what Forbes described as “Vladimir Putin’s most notorious power grab.”

Kukes only lasted a year at Yukos. Afterward, he bounced from oil company to oil company. Eventually, he landed back in Houston for a job at Nafta Consulting, which focuses on “creating cross border opportunities between companies in the U.S. and Russia,” according to the company’s website.

And Kukes, it seems, is no stranger to greasing a few palms to influence officials. CIA documents released in 2003 claim that “Kukes said that he bribed local officials,” an accusation which he has denied. Despite his possible willingness to use money to sway officials and being a U.S. citizen since the 1970s, Kukes had no history of political contributions before 2016. That changed, in a big way, when Donald Trump ran for president.

Timing is everything

In early March 2016, Kukes gave $2,700 – the maximum amount possible – to Donald Trump’s primary campaign. Then in late June, Kukes began a veritable flood of contributions, largely to a joint fundraising committee called Trump Victory, whose primary beneficiaries included not only Trump’s campaign but the Republican National Committee and a handful of other state-level GOP committees.

All told, Kukes contributed $283,283 during the 2016 cycle. More than 99 percent came after the Trump Tower meeting in June.

The timing is important because between Kukes’ initial donation in March and the deluge of contributions from June to September, two critical things had happened. First, in early May, Trump won the Indiana Republican primary and became his party’s presumptive nominee. Second, on June 9, the fateful meeting between Paul Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and a group of Russians took place in Trump Tower.

The meeting had been set up by an entertainment publicist named Rob Goldstone as a part of the Russian government’s “support for Mr. Trump,” according to an email to Donald Trump Jr.

In the email, Goldstone told Trump Jr. that the Russian attendees at the meeting would provide information that “would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.” While Trump Jr. has maintained that nothing came of the meeting, this is where Manafort apparently jotted the note about a political contribution and the RNC. Two weeks later, Simon Kukes – who happens to be the former owner of a $1.7 million condo in Trump Parc – began contributing tens of thousands of dollars to Trump and the Republican Party.

Whether or not Kukes’ decision to give more than a quarter of a million dollars to Trump and the Republican Party is related to the notes Manafort jotted down that day is unclear. The OpenSecrets Blog has reached out to Kukes but had not received a response by the time of publication.

What is clear, however, is Kukes isn’t bashful about his financial support for President Trump or his connections to the Russian oil and gas industry. The “In the News” section of Nafta’s website includes a link to the OpenSecrets Blog’s previous reporting about Kukes’ contributions, which seemingly welcomes the publicity.

]]>A climate of cash in votes on global warminghttps://www.opensecrets.org/news/2016/08/a-climate-of-cash-in-votes-on-global-warming/
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2016/08/a-climate-of-cash-in-votes-on-global-warming/#respondMon, 29 Aug 2016 13:56:32 +0000http://www.opensecrets.org/news/?p=15561For years now, the scientific consensus has been that climate change is occurring and is caused mainly by the actions of human beings.…

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) has received the most money from the oil & gas and coal mining industries, over $1.6 million since 2010. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

For years now, the scientific consensus has been that climate change is occurring and is caused mainly by the actions of human beings. So why, during the first month of the 114th Congress, did nearly half the Senate – all Republicans – vote against an amendment stating that human activities contribute significantly to climate change?

We don’t know.

But we can say that those who voted for the amendment received less than one-fifth as much in campaign contributions from the oil & gas and coal industries as those who voted against it.

Senators who have publicly denied that humans have had a significant impact on climate change took in an average of $467,022 more from the coal mining and oil & gas industries since 2010 than those who have publicly accepted humans’ role in the global rise in temperature.

In connection with a bill focused on the now-failed Keystone XL pipeline in Jan. 2015, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) introduced an amendment that read ”climate change is real and human activity significantly contributes to climate change.”

The first part of the amendment wasn’t controversial; the Senate had passed an amendment earlier that day acknowledging the existence of climate change by a nearly unanimous margin; only Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) voted against it. The stumbling block was the addition of language acknowledging that climate change is caused by people’s actions. Nearly half of the Senate opposed the amendment containing that text.

Senators who voted for the amendment received an average of $102,594 from individuals and PACs of the coal mining and oil & gas industries since 2010, while senators who voted against it received more than five times as much: $569,616.

Both the oil & gas and coal mining industries have significant incentives to halt efforts to stop climate change, which is caused in large part by gas-burning vehicles and coal-fueled power plants that produce greenhouse gases; any plans to tackle climate change would mean curbing the output of these gases, cutting into industry profits. Donating to lawmakers in the hope of preventing action on the issue would seem to be a good investment for them.

Much of the controversy that surrounds climate change has been fanned by organizations funded by the oil industry, including ExxonMobil and the billionaire industrialists David and Charles Koch. They’ve helped create the illusion of a debate when in reality few scientists dispute that climate change is real and is caused in large part by human actions.

The American Coal Council, the Independent Petroleum Association of America, the National Mining Association and the American Petroleum Institute did not respond to requests for comment.

Campaign contributions from fossil fuel industries are likely not the only incentive for senators to avoid acknowledging man’s impact on the climate. Many of those who voted against the amendment, and who also received significant sums from oil & gas and/or coal mining, hail from states with heavy production of either crude oil or coal.

And there are anomalies, highlighting how economic interests, campaign contributions and personal beliefs are hard to tease apart in searching for what motivates a vote in Congress.

For instance, nine senators who voted against the amendment come from states that don’t produce significant amounts of coal or oil. They’re also not on the Senate Energy Committee. These senators received an average of $341,811 from coal mining and oil & gas between 2010 and mid-2016. (We considered significant production to be more than 5,000 short tons of coal per year, and more than 5,000 barrels of oil, as measured by the U.S. Energy Information Administration in 2014.)

Furthermore, there are 10 senators – nine Democrats plus Republican Sen. Mark Kirk – who voted for the amendment though their states produce both coal and oil in significant quantities. They’ve received an average of $153,176 from the industries between 2010 and June 30, 2016.

Twenty-five of the 51 senators who approved the measure were located in states where there was significant production of either coal or oil.

Besides Kirk, four other Republicans voted for the amendment – Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and Susan Collins (Maine) – along with Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) plus all the Democrats. The Republicans voting aye received, on average, $276,232 from oil & gas and coal mining industries, which is $266,218 less than the average amount given to Republicans. Alexander is even on the Energy Committee, whose members usually receive much more cash from the oil & gas and coal industries than average.

A separate amendment proposed by Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) said that human activities contributed to climate change, but lacked the “significantly” of the Schatz proposal. Hoeven’s measure picked up 10 additional Republican votes, but still did not pass. The average amount for senators voting against that amendment was about the same, at $584,799.

Here’s the breakdown of these senators, whose votes imply they believe climate change is caused in part by humans, but not significantly.

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee that oversees climate legislation, once brought a snowball to the Senate floor as a way to demonstrate his view that climate change is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated against the American people,” though he later voted for an amendment stating that climate change is real. (Climate change refers to rising average global temperatures, not an absence of all sub-zero temperatures.) Inhofe has received $772,100 from the oil & gas and coal mining industries.

On average, current members of the Environment and Public Works Committee who voted for the amendment received just $39,717 from oil & gas and coal mining since 2010. Members who voted against it, like Inhofe, received an average $458,823.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) has received the most money from these interest groups – over $1.6 million – since 2010. At the low end is Sanders, with just $3,350 in the same time frame.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush saw his support from Wall Street nearly vanish over the last six months. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

The securities and investment industry flexed serious financial muscle in the presidential money race last year. At $102 million contributed to all candidates, current and former, and the super PACs supporting them, it led all industries tracked by the Center for Responsive Politics, new data show.

Super PACs allowed the industry to gain an outsize share of the pie in 2015 as Wall Street gravitated to some candidates and utterly abandoned others. With billionaire investors giving right and left, total contributions from the industry to presidential super PACs rose to $93 million.

But while securities and investment interests hold the lead in terms of money to the types of groups that can receive unlimited contributions, they gave far less to the campaign committees under the direct control of the candidates — just $9.3 million.

Investors made up the top donor industry to six of the current candidates when their campaign committees and super PACs are combined; the exceptions were retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, businesswoman Carly Fiorina, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

That $84 million split reveals, again, a difference in the funding sources for campaigns and for super PACs. Lawyers and law firms, along with individuals who reported they were retired, beat out securities and investment as the largest overall sources of direct campaign contributions, at $16 million and $33 million respectively. Real estate followed Wall Street closely at $8.8 million.

For some candidates, like former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the difference allows for a technically accurate but misleading characterization of the facts. In December, Clinton could say she receives more contributions from teachers than Wall Street types even as her super PACs scooped up $17.2 million from wealthy financiers. She can’t make that claim anymore, by the way: Her campaign has now received more money (barely) from individuals in the securities and investment industry than in education: $2.93 million to $2.88 million, respectively.

Despite huge contributions to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and one $11 million contribution to Sen. Ted Cruz from fund manager Robert Mercer in the first six months of 2015, securities and investment firms appear to have picked their favorite candidate on the Republican side: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

As OpenSecrets reported in November, a group of megadonor individuals in the industry often give together, and they didn’t disappoint Rubio after the largest donor, Paul Singer of Elliot Management, endorsed him.

Meanwhile, support for Jeb Bush from financiers nearly evaporated: Outside groups backing Bush’s candidacy received $30 million from financiers in the first six months of 2015; in the last six months, they received just $961,532. As Bloomberg reported, even Goldman Sachs, a company with particularly close ties to the George W. Bush administration, abandoned him in favor of Marco Rubio. (See sidebar on Goldman Sachs.)

Other industries appeared to establish footholds with candidates outside the so-called “establishment lane.” Individuals in the education industry gave to $554,776 to Sanders, while the health professionals industry showed support for Carson with $902,389 in donations.

Senior Researcher Doug Weber contributed to this post.

Correction, 2/4/2016: Due to a data error, the original version of this story contained figures that were too low in several instances for contributions from the securities & investment industry. The numbers have been corrected. We regret the error.

French President Francois Hollande, US President Barack Obama and Microsoft CEO Bill Gates at the climate change conference in France. (Christian Liewig/Sipa USA

Back in Washington after a trip last week to the global climate change conference in Paris, President Barack Obama will soon find two new bills on his desk, both aimed at sinking his administration’s initiatives to reduce carbon emissions.

The president isn’t expected to sign them. But the message from the Republican-majority Congress is unmistakable: When it comes to climate change, Mr. President, you’re on your own.

As it happens, 120 members of Congress — more than one-fifth — are personally invested in seeing fossil fuel companies remain strong: They own oil and gas assets that were valued at between $44 million and $134 million in 2014, according to personal financial disclosure statements analyzed by OpenSecrets.org.

The stock was held by members of both parties, while the votes on the provisions going to the White House were largely party-line affairs; almost all Democrats stuck with the president.

But among the 13 lawmakers who held the largest amount of stock in fossil fuel companies — each with oil and gas assets worth more than $1 million — 10 were Republicans and just three were Democrats.

Rep. Thomas MacArthur (R-N.J.) owned stock in all four of those corporations and more — with at least $1.3 million in shares of 41 oil and gas companies, his industry portfolio far outpaces his colleagues’.

He’s also a member of the House Committee on Natural Resources.

As a member of the federal lands subcommittee, MacArthur helps oversee the nation’s national parks, national forests, public lands and natural monuments. In May, he introduced a bill that would allow rights-of-way for natural gas pipelines cutting through all federally owned lands.

“Rep. MacArthur’s bill has nothing to do with benefiting any one organization or company. In fact, it removes power from members of Congress to make these pipeline decisions,” Chris Russell, MacArthur’s campaign spokesman, said.

Russell said Democrats targeted MacArthur’s investments in his last campaign, calling their efforts an attempt to “manufacture phony controversies on every investment Tom ever made.”

Jon Fox, who focuses on money-in-politics issues for the environmental advocacy group Friends of the Earth in Berkeley, Calif., said it’s “ridiculous” that legislators can profit from “selling out the planet” to such companies. “Disclosure is clearly not enough to stop lawmakers from passing rules that help the companies they are invested in. Congress should act to tighten the ethics rules to prevent legislators from profiting from climate change,” he said.

MacArthur’s average estimated wealth stood at about $53 million in 2014 and he reported owning thousands of assets — much more than just oil and gas company stock. Meanwhile, however, four lawmakers each held one asset in the oil and gas industry worth $1 million or more in 2014 on its own.

Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) owned between $11 million and $55 million in shares of Trinity Petroleum and received between $100,000 and $1 million in capital gains from those assets in 2014. That made him the lawmaker most heavily invested in the oil and gas industry by a wide margin, all due to his ties to one company.

Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), who owned a stake in a North Dakota energy holdings company worth between $1.2 million and $5.4 million, acquired a bigger share of the company, Mainstream Investors LLC, between 2013 and 2014, according to his aide. Mainstream Investors buys leases in the Bakken, the North Dakota shale formation that saw a massive boom in gas drilling in the last decade.

Two more members owned more than $1 million in oil and gas assets. Rep. Cresent Hardy (R-Nev.) held assets worth more than $1 million in Obsidian Holdings LLC, and Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.) owned $1 million in Apco Oil and Gas International assets.

President Obama celebrated with a trip to the Florida Everglades to highlight the perils of climate change and talk up his proposed power plant emission rules. Back in Washington, House Republicans observed the occasion with a subcommittee vote on a measure that would delay those rules. The sponsors of the bill, as it turns out, are pretty tight with electric utilities and oil and gas interests.

The rules, announced last year, would pull back power plant carbon dioxide emissions to 30 percent below 2005 levels; power plants are the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the country, and make up a third of the total emissions nationwide. The bill would require judicial review of the EPA rules before any states would be required to comply; in other words, it would put the brakes on them indefinitely.

Obama’s trip to what might be seen as enemy territory on Wednesday (some high profile Florida politicians, including presidential hopefuls Sen. Marco Rubio and former Gov. Jeb Bush, have a different perspective on climate change and the role of human activity) and the legislation that moved through the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on energy and power are just the latest blows between the administration and congressional Republicans on curbing power plant emissions.

The sponsors of the bill, subcommittee chairman Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) and Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.), both took in sizable sums from the electric utilities as well as oil and gas industries — both of which emit a bunch of carbon every year and are the most likely to be directly impacted by the new EPA rules.

Utilities interests were Whitfield’s No. 1 donor. In the 2014 cycle, his campaign committee and leadership PAC together raked in $270,450 from the industry, most of which came from industry PACs. Oil and gas came in at No. 3 for Whitfield, giving his two committees $153,500 — all from PACs.

Griffith’s fundraising totals are smaller, but the two industries still have an outsized role in his coffers. Electric utilities were the second biggest cash source ($67,000) for the Virginian lawmaker, followed by oil and gas ($56,000).

As OpenSecrets Blog has noted, those industries are quite enamored with congressional Republicans in general. GOP lawmakers got 63 percent of the $21.5 million the electric utilities industry spent in 2014 on candidates. For oil and gas, Republicans got 87 percent of the $42.8 million the industry gave to candidates.

The most obvious supporters of curbing greenhouse gas emissions, environmental interests, gave just $6.6 million to candidates last year, and 92 percent of that went to Democrats. But the biggest impact of environmentalists in 2014 was in the outside money category — at least in terms of dollars spent, though perhaps not money spent effectively. Billionaire Tom Steyer was the single-biggest donor of the 2014 cycle, donating more than $73 million to liberal outside groups, with the majority going to his group NextGen Climate Action, a super PAC set up to encourage candidates to address climate change. Only 31 percent of NextGen’s spending backed a winning candidate. Environmental interests as a whole, including Steyer, contributed $78.6 million in the 2014 election.

]]>https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2015/04/for-earth-day-industry-backed-republicans-look-to-delay-power-plant-rules-while-obama-talks-them-up/feed/0Big Industries Gave to Democrats Who Strayed on EPA Billshttps://www.opensecrets.org/news/2015/03/big-industries-gave-to-democrats-who-strayed-on-epa-bills/
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2015/03/big-industries-gave-to-democrats-who-strayed-on-epa-bills/#respondTue, 24 Mar 2015 16:33:47 +0000http://www.opensecrets.org/news/?p=8666The word “science” is having an existential crisis in Washington. Two bills passed by the House last week that would redefine…

Two bills passed by the House last week that would redefine how the EPA considers science, and what science it can consider, have attracted huge interest from big EPA-regulated industries that have shown a preference for contributing to GOP campaigns — and to the handful of Democrats who voted with the Republicans.

The legislation puts big money industries and scientists on opposite sides of the ring. The big agriculture, oil, utility and other corporations say they want transparency and independent thinking in the EPA, while scientists say just the opposite will result if the measures are made law.

“House leaders and their allies in industry don’t like the answers science is giving,” said Andrew Rosenberg, the director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, in a statement. “The titles and text of these bills are cleverly designed to conceal their purpose, which is to protect industry from any oversight and any limits on their ability to pollute.”

One bill would affect the membership and operation of EPA’s Science Advisory Board. The board exists to give the agency scientific advice on potential regulations. Supporters of the bill, who argue that EPA has a habit of twisting science around for whatever purpose it sees fit, say the changes will make the board more well-rounded and more transparent. Opponents, including the Union of Concerned Scientists, criticize the bill for permitting employees of the industries being regulated to be on the board; for requiring extensive public hearings that they say would create an undue burden on the process (though EPA is already required to do that separately); and for barring some of the most knowledgeable scientists from evaluating issues if their own work is involved.

The other, the Secret Science Reform Act would keep EPA from writing regulations based upon science that isn’t made available to the public. Supporters want the process to be more inclusive and open. Opponents say that it’s more complicated: Sometimes supporting science is based on sensitive information that can’t be made public, for example, and some scientific information is copyrighted and can’t be widely disseminated easily and at no cost.

As OpenSecrets Blog reported last year when the advisory board bill passed the House in the last Congress, heavyweight industries — including oil and gas, chemical companies, and big ag — flexed their D.C. muscles in support of that bill. A near-party line vote sent the legislation along to the Senate, and there were clear links between the handful of Democrats that strayed over and voted with House Republicans on the bill and those interest groups.

Just one of the Democrats that strayed from the party four months ago returned to serve in the 114th Congress. Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), now the ranking member of the House Agriculture Committee, receives a lot of cash from major players in agriculture. In the 2014 cycle, he took in $344,150 from the crop production industry and $160,250 from agricultural services and products. His top two donors were two big agriculture companies: Monsanto and American Crystal Sugar, which each gave $22,250 (Monsanto lobbyists pitched in another $4,000).

One other Democrat joined Peterson and Republicans this year on that bill, freshman Rep. Brad Ashford of Nebraska. Ashford’s top industries don’t pop out as ones that would be interested in the advisory board bill (and, in fact, his enthusiasm for fundraising appears low), but his personal finances tell a different story. His largest asset by far in 2013, the most recent year for which information is available, was a stake in oil and gas producer Apache Corp. totaling between $1.1 million and $5.2 million (lawmakers are required to list their holdings only in ranges on personal financial disclosure forms).

Interest in the ‘secret science’ bill last year came mostly from a similar set of industries — plus electric utilities, according to lobbying reports; the utilities also favor the GOP with their contributions, although not so lopsidedly as oil and gas does.

Four Democrats jumped ship on the ‘secret science’ bill this year to vote with Republicans, including Ashford and Peterson. The other two, Reps. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) and Jim Costa (D-Calif.), both had strong support from the industries that lobbied on the science bills as well.

Cuellar received $127,200 from the oil and gas industry last cycle, making it his top industry overall. Crop production made a showing as well (No. 6 with $45,850), as did electric utilities (No. 11, giving $26,800). Conoco Phillips was his fifth biggest donor ($10,750, and lobbyists for the company gave another $500), and American Crystal Sugar was No. 6 ($10,000).

Costa also got a lot of love from agriculture (his No. 1 at $228,950), oil and gas (No. 2 giving $101,999 — despite being an industry that doesn’t exist in his district at all), and electric utilities (No. 10 at $35,500). American Crystal Sugar was his fourth most generous donor ($20,000), and Exxon was his seventh ($15,000).

The latest go-round is a case of deja vu all over again in Congress, as both bills passed the House last year and were sent to the Senate, where they died when the Democrats were in the majority. The outcome could be different this year, though Republicans are still a handful of votes shy of the 60 they’d need for cloture. Even then, it might not matter: The Obama Administration promptly issued veto threats as the bills headed to the Senate.

]]>https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2015/03/big-industries-gave-to-democrats-who-strayed-on-epa-bills/feed/0Keystone Opponents Favored by Environmental Groups, But the Checks Were Smallerhttps://www.opensecrets.org/news/2015/01/keystone-opponents-favored-by-environmental-groups-but-the-checks-were-smaller/
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2015/01/keystone-opponents-favored-by-environmental-groups-but-the-checks-were-smaller/#respondFri, 30 Jan 2015 16:32:59 +0000http://www.opensecrets.org/news/?p=7729Yesterday’s Senate vote on the KeystoneXL pipeline showed some sharp breaks along party lines, as no Republicans voted against the…

People rally to protest the Keystone XL Pipeline in front of the White House January 28, 2015 in Washington, DC. Photo by Olivier Douliery/Sipa USA

Yesterday’s Senate vote on the KeystoneXL pipeline showed some sharp breaks along party lines, as no Republicans voted against the bill — but also along lines of financial support from special interest groups. Last night, we noted that senators who voted for the pipeline project to go forward have received, on average, seven times more money for their campaigns and leadership PACs from the oil and gas industry than those who voted against.

We re-ran our analysis but this time focused on how much environmental interests — most of whom have vehemently opposed the project — have given to the campaigns and leadership PACs of senators who voted yesterday. There was, once again, a stark contrast — those who voted against the bill received, on average, seven times more from environmental interests than the senators who voted for the bill. But while the proportions were similar, the money from environmental interests is much smaller, and in some cases not significantly more than the oil and gas money received by the no voters.

Over the course of their careers, the 36 senators who voted no on S.1 yesterday have received, on average, $177,692 in donations to their campaigns and PACs from environmental interests. The 62 senators who voted yes took in, on average, just $23,127. That is an undeniable chasm. But all of that money pales in comparison to the numbers we spotted on the oil and gas side, where supporters of S.1 have received, on average, $570,034 over their careers, and even the 36 senators who voted no have received $78,641 from the industry.

There are several reasons for these gaps.

First, it’s much more difficult to track money coming from environmental interests. The Center for Responsive Politics uses information provided by donors when they make donations to organize the data into interest group and industry categories. Donors are required to include their employer and occupation — making it very easy to identify individuals who work in the oil and gas industry, which employs far more people than environmental organizations. But they don’t need to list their political beliefs or social concerns — which might help identify donors motivated by an interest in environmental causes.

That said, there is almost certainly more money on the oil and gas side — it is, and always has been, an important industry and a particularly powerful and influential one in Washington. By our calculations, the oil and gas industry has always been in the top 20 spenders when it comes to campaign finance (going back to 1989) and currently ranks as the ninth largest source of campaign contributions. The environmental interest group category, on the other hand, has rarely cracked the top 50.

In 2014, it should be noted, we ranked it the sixth-largest source of campaign cash, but almost entirely because of the $72 million donated to super PACs by former investment banker Tom Steyer, who said his primary motivation was supporting candidates who would act on climate change. It’s hard to gauge the effectiveness of those donations because they went to a variety of places, and much of it was not spent on the federal level (which is the only level CRP tracks). But looking at Steyer’s main vehicle for spending that money on the federal level, the super PAC NextGen Climate Action, we found only about 31.4 percent of the money wound up backing a winning candidate in the 2014 elections — a fairly dismal return rate for Steyer.

Both interest groups are also highly partisan. Since 1989, the oil and gas industry has donated $376.4 million to candidates and parties, of which 79 percent went to Republicans. In the same time period, environmental interests have donated roughly $41 million, of which 91 percent went to Democrats. Much of this divide is simply due to partisan politics.

However, looking at the handful of Democrats who crossed the line — there were nine who voted with the Republicans — there are some key differences. The 36 Democrats who voted no on S.1, have received, on average $183,222 from environmental interests, and the nine Democrats who split with their party have received, on average, just $97,183. The Democrats who voted no, received, on average, just $82,595 from oil and gas interests, and the nine who voted with Republicans average $140,193.

We also compared this vote correlation with the one we did in November to see how the new Senate may be different than the old. That time around, a Democratic-controlled Senate rejected a bill, championed by then-Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), a supporter of the pipeline, which was viewed mainly as political theater — an opportunity for Landrieu to show undecided voters her support for a cause popular in her state. Landrieu was defeated by her Republican opponent, Bill Cassidy.

While supporters of this current KeystoneXL legislation received, on average, seven times more from oil and gas than opponents, in November, it was just six times more. On the other side though, there has been virtually no change: senators voting against the bill received about seven times more from environmental interests then and now.

Full lists of all current senators and their career totals from both the oil and gas industry and environmental interests can be found here. The data includes only donations made after 1989.

Senators who voted to push through development of the Keystone XL pipeline today have received, on average, $570,034 in contributions to their campaigns and leadership PACs from the oil and gas industry over the course of their careers. The 35 senators who voted against bill have received, on average, just $78,641 from the industry.

The Obama administration is still considering whether or not to approve the pipeline, but the Republican-led 114th Congress seized the reins almost as soon as it took office earlier this month. The House passed H.R. 3, the Keystone XL Pipeline Act, on Jan. 9 by a vote of 266-153. The Senate followed suit with its version of the Keystone bill, S.1, today, with nine Democrats joining every single Republican to pass the measure 62-36.

President Obama has threatened to veto the bill, and unless its supporters can drum up five more Senate votes, a congressional override would fail.

While some of the disparity between the amounts received by the yea versus nay voters can be explained by a longstanding partisan tilt of the oil and gas industry — since 1990, 79 percent of the industry’s campaign contributions have gone to Republicans — the nine Democrats who sided with the GOP received significantly more from the industry than their party colleagues. On average, Democrats who voted for S.1 received $140,193 from the oil and gas industry, while those who voted no, received just $82,595.

The object of the tussle is a proposed 1,179-mile pipeline that would cost an estimated $5.4 billion to construct and would transport more oil from Canada’s Alberta tar sands to the Gulf of Mexico, where it would be refined. Republicans support it because of the additional energy it will “This is about energy, jobs, economic activity, national security and building the right kind of infrastructure we need,” said Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) after the vote. Environmentalists and many Democrats oppose it because it will lead to more oil extraction from the tar sands and, they say, accelerate climate change; in addition, many of the jobs the pipeline will generate will be tied to construction, and will disappear once the infrastructure is built.

Full lists of all current senators and their career totals from both the oil and gas industry and environmental interests can be found here. The data includes only donations made after 1989.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) triumphantly took his spot as the No. 2 Republican in the House this afternoon, stepping up from No. 3. But Rep. Pete Roskam (R-Ill.), who was one rung lower on the ladder as deputy whip, did not manage to ride McCarthy’s coattails. Instead, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) became majority whip — which, from a campaign finance standpoint, is almost as surprising as the primary loss by Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) last week that set the leadership shuffle in motion.

Conventional wisdom, and history, has dictated that those who dole out the most cash for their lawmaker colleagues usually are best positioned to rise. Cantor, the now-former majority leader, was legendary for his ability to fundraise for other members.

McCarthy follows in that tradition, as we detailed last week, and Roskam also seemed to have a strong fundraising game. Scalise did not.

Over the course of Roskam’s seven-year career, his campaign committee and leadership PAChave combined to give $2.6 million away to other candidates and to GOP party organizations. The bulk has gone to the National Republican Congressional Committee, the key party organization supporting House Republicans. Just $875,000 of his funds have gone to candidates directly. So far in the 2014 cycle he has transferred more than $754,000 from his campaign committee to the NRCC, which makes him the third largest supporter of the party organ.

Scalise, on the other hand, has given a fraction of that. His leadership PAC, Eye of the Tiger PAC, has given just $240,000 to fellow Republicans since 2010. So far this cycle it has raised a meager $200,000 and given away only $85,000 — or about 15 percent of what Roskam has given to the NRCC this cycle.

Scalise is also not a particularly successful fundraiser: He has never collected more than $1.6 million to win an election. Over the course of his entire career, he has raised $5.7 million — only slightly more than the $5.4 million Cantor raised this cycle alone. So far this cycle Scalise has only raised $1 million. That’s five times as much as Brat spent to beat Cantor, but is one-fifth of what Cantor spent.

What Scalise did have was his role as head of the Republican Study Committee, a sub-group in the House GOP caucus committed to developing more conservative policy, to help boost his numbers. And he won, easily, on the first ballot.

Scalise also breaks the mold by having some diversity among his financial supporters compared to Cantor, McCarthy, Roskam and Boehner. So far this cycle, Cantor, Boehner and McCarthy all count the securities and investment industry (Wall Street) as their top source of campaign donations, while it’s No. 2 for Roskam (his top donor industry is insurance). But the oil and gas industry is Scalise’s No. 1 campaign benefactor. Securities and investment straggles in as his sixteenth largest source of financial support.